AKRON, Ohio -- Recordings of FBI wiretaps of former Cuyahoga County auditor Frank Russo and former commissioner Jimmy Dimora played in federal court today showed the two men bristling over questions from a columnist for The Plain Dealer immediately after their infamous Las Vegas vacation.

Dimora is on trial on federal racketeering charges in Akron and Russo took a plea deal in 2010, pleading guilty to 21 corruption-related offenses and faces nearly 22 years in prison

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Follow Jimmy Dimora's trial live with The Plain Dealer and cleveland.com. We have a team of reporters covering the trial every day, providing live updates and video reports throughout. Find that coverage at cleveland.com/countyincrisis

Background on the trial

Late in the afternoon, however, prosecutors also played a recording in which Russo talks with Michael McIntyre, a reporter at The Plain Dealer who writes the "Tipoff" column.

First McIntyre asks Russo: "Well, were there a lot of prostitutes with you guys?"

Russo responds by telling McIntyre on the recording that "what goes on in Vegas, stays in Vegas" and urges the columnist to compare the Vegas downtown to Cleveland's downtown.

Russo and Dimora then talk, according to another recording played to the jury and federal Judge Sara Lioi: "We just got home on the red-eye last night and already Mike McIntyre calling me," Russo says to Dimora.

"F--- these Plain Dealer. They're motherf----ers," Dimora says at one point, according to the audio recording. "Tell them I sat in first class because my fat a-- couldn't fit in second class."

Dimora complains to Russo that he doesn't believe the newspaper writes about other public officials in Cleveland taking trips.

"It's a private f---ing thing, not a public thing," Dimora says on the recording.

Russo suggests that the newspaper is writing about him and Dimora because they are of Italian descent.

Judge Lioi ended testimony for this week just before 5 p.m. The trial will pick up again at 8:20 Tuesday morning following the Martin Luther King Day holiday.

are found in a 36-count, 148-page
federal indictment (see full text below), alleging that he used his county commissioner's office as the base to run a criminal enterprise. Dimora is on trial along with a co-defendant, Michael Gabor, 52, of
Parma, a former office assistant in the auditor's office. Gabor is accused of bribery and conspiracy, including a charge that he tried to pay a judge $10,000 to fix his divorce case.

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